Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 review: promising first chassis

Nanoxia's strong first entry in the chassis market

By David van DantzigSaturday 29 December 2012 05:58

Looks

When you first look at the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 it's a familiar face. Ok, there are two doors instead of one, but the dark grey colour scheme reminds us of the Antec Performance One chassis and Fractal Design's Define R series. When you start looking a little closer, it becomes clear that the similarities are largely superficial.

The hinges of the doors in front are on the right side, and this breaks with tradition, with the exception of the Bitfenix Ghost and the Corsair Obsidian 550D that can open both ways. This is no coincidence, as Nanoxia indicates this decision was made because most users are right-handed and will therefore place the chassis to the right of them. Using two doors instead of one was done so you can adjust the fan speed without needing to open the entire thing, according to Nanoxia.

While not every argument is as strong, it's clear that Nanoxia put some thought into the design, looking at the chassis from a user's perspective, and this is something we can only applaud. Whether having two doors instead of one really is an advantage, we'll leave in the middle.

We mentioned previously that the Deep Silence 1 has some clever design elements. This includes the top, where you can use a slider to raise a panel a couple centimetres. This creates air vents for letting out warm air. Not entirely out of place Nanoxia calls this the chimney. We tested this chassis in two configurations, with and without the chimney open. The difference is small but still noticeable.

In front of the chimney a panel is located, that flips up on one side to reveal the frontal connectors. These consists of two USB 2.0, two USB 3.0 ports and two audio jacks. All the way to the front is the power button, which doesn't feel entirely solid. It wiggles a little bit, which detracts from the otherwise quality feel and attention to detail of this chassis. Unfortunately it won't be the last time we're faced with that feeling.